It may give some support to the theory of tadpole development above mentioned, to add, that the same cause produces the very same effects upon human beings; upon human mothers, and upon human children. Human mothers living in dark cellars produce an unusual proportion of defective children. Go into the narrow streets, and the dark lanes, courts, and alleys of our splendid cities, there you will see an unusual number of deformed people, men, women, and children, but particularly children. In some cells under the fortifications of Lisle, a number of poor people took up their abode; the proportion of defective infants produced by them became so great, that it was deemed necessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up. The window duties multiply cells like those of the fortifications of Lisle, in London, in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Bristol, and in every city and town in England by hundreds and by thousands, and with the same result; but the cells here are not shut up, nor is the cause that produces them removed. Even in cases in which the absence of light is not so complete as to produce a result thus definite and striking, the effects of the privation are still abundantly manifest in the pale and sickly complexion, and the enfeebled and stunted frame; nor can it be otherwise, since, from the essential constitution of organised beings, light is as necessary to the development of the animal as it is to the growth of the plant. The diseases the want of it produces are of long continuance, and waste the means of life before death results; they may therefore be characterised as pauperising diseases. As to death itself, it has been calculated that nearly ten thousand persons perish annually in London alone from diseases solely produced by an impeded circulation of air and admission of light. This prodigal waste of health, strength, and of life itself, falls much more heavily on the poor, than the mere fiscal burden, imposed by the tax, falls on the richer classes. Inasmuch, then, as health is the capital of the working man, whatever be the necessities of the state, _nothing_ can justify a tax affecting the health of the people, and especially the health of the labouring community, whose bodily strength constitutes their wealth, and oftentimes their only possession. In conclusion we may say, without wishing to libel any respectable Act of Parliament, that the Window-Tax kills countless human beings in tens of thousands every year.